Page 180 of The Perfect Love

“Trev! I know you’re pissed, but you need to stop!” BK yells, but I ignore him.

Finally, I have this fucker in my grasp. He will pay. I will make him pay for what he did to her.

DJ shoves me again. “Fucker! This really how you want to play it? You’re going to pretend you didn’t help me?”

“What the fuck are you talking about? I’d never help you.”

“When I asked you to cover for me if someone came looking for me? What did you think I meant? You’re not naive enough to believe I was worried about a party breaking up, are you?”

I growl and shove him against the wall again, landing a punch to his ribs this time, even as his words eat away at me.

It never crossed my mind he’d mean something like that. Parties get broken up all the time. People fight. But I remember the few times girls came around the next day asking for him. I don’t remember them looking upset, but could he have…? Once a guy came looking about damages for something at a party. I didn’t lie and say he hadn’t been there, just that I didn’t know where DJ was. Why did I do that? Why did I ever fucking lie for him? Why? Horror coils in my stomach when I remember the time campus police knocked on the door looking for him. He wasn’t there. Then they asked if he’d been at a party the night before. Campus police. Chelsea?

All those thoughts swirl inside me, deepening my rage.

He pushes me back, then gets in a punch to my face, sending me tumbling backward, but I grab his shirt and drag him onto the ground with me until we’re in a full-fledged brawl. And though I hear BK trying to get me to stop, Hyla yelling at me, and maybe even Chelsea’s soft voice too, I can’t stop myself.

I’m lost in my hatred and rage. I was afraid someone I knew did this? But someone I lived with? Someone who might’ve used me to help him get away with it?

Fuck him.

But then hands are on me, and I’m being pulled upright and thrown against the wall.

“Hands behind your back. You’re under arrest for disorderly conduct.”

Fuck.

My chest rises and falls against the brick of the building as the officer reads me my rights. When he pulls me off the wall, my head is spinning, and reality is slowly settling in.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see DJ, and it takes everything in me not to growl. Not to lunge and make this all worse. I might’ve just fucked up a lot of things, but only one matters to me.

My eyes go to Chelsea, who is standing with Hyla.

A third officer stands in front of everyone—thankfully, the only other witnesses to this were BK and Sasha. Not that it matters.

“Who started it?” the third officer asks.

“He did,” DJ spits in my direction.

“He was provoked,” Hyla throws back, a murderous glare aimed at DJ. She has one arm wrapped protectively around Chelsea.

“How so?” the officer asks.

That’s when Chelsea steps forward, a shaking finger pointed at DJ. “He raped me.”

The officer blinks, then looks at the other two officers holding DJ and me.

“That’s a heavy accusation,” he says.

Chelsea stands tall. “It’s complicated. More complicated than even I knew until tonight, but I had an exam performed after and DNA was found. I’m confident it will match his.”

The officer drums his pen on his notepad, then throws his thumb out to the cars behind him.

“All right, take them both in.” He turns to Chelsea. “If what you’re saying is true, you’ll need to come down and give a statement, talk to a detective. Possibly more.”

Chelsea nods. “Okay.”

“Do you have a way to get there?” he asks.

---